Pop Conference 2025

Music memoirs use first-person narration to print or revise artistic legacies by aestheticizing
intimate proximities between author and reader. As members of a book club dedicated to music
biographies, we are compelled by the construction of these mythologies as well as by our own
engagement, recirculation, or disavowal of them. Public School is a consortium of music
scholars, cultural critics, and journalists who convene every month over Zoom to talk about
various works of musical non-fiction. In our monthly conversations, we have identified several
stylistic conventions associated with music memoirs that merit critical interrogation. We have
also noticed efforts from authors and publishers to make music memoirs more interactive and
multisensorial in recent years in order to turn reading into an immersive experience.

In this roundtable, we focus our attention on four motifs that make the music memoir legible as a
distinct non-fictional genre. First, we consider the dominance of portraiture in music memoir
cover art and pay particular attention toward how memoirists like Lucinda Williams and Margo
Price use portraits to foreground their authority and legacy not only as musicians detailing their
lived experiences, but also as writers translating their virtuosity as songwriters into a different
literary form. Next, we interrogate how memoirs like Flea’s Acid for the Children and Prince’s
The Beautiful Ones use photographic inserts and unorthodox prose to reframe archival footage
of artists’ childhood photographs, promotional materials, and candids as scrapbook material that
strengthens readers’ emotional connections through nostalgia. Then, we examine the genre’s
associations with first-person address and reminiscence as articulations of authorial voice by
considering how divas like Mariah Carey and Barbra Streisand, and actors like Michelle
Williams who interpret Britney Spears’ recollections, have transformed the memoir as a listening
experience by showcasing their singular voices as narrators and recording artists. Finally,
building from Carey and Streisand’s innovative approaches to audiobooks, we consider how
memoirs like Hua Hsu’s Stay True and Dante Ross’ Son of the City enhance life-writing in the
digital age with supplements like zines and playlists.

Memoirs are also reflexive and adaptive to technological change. Thus, we conclude by
contemplating our own gathering practices. Since we are scattered across the United States,
Public School exists entirely online. Zoom’s interface affords us a particular type of mediated
intimacy during our conversations and interviews with invited guests that let us see each other’s
homes, even if we have never actually occupied shared space together offline. Furthermore, we
use Zoom’s chat function to distribute additional reading, screening, and listening material
related to our conversations, which we have archived in a shared Notes app list that we update
after each meeting. Historically, in-person book clubs have enforced a formalized mode of
decorum that is gendered, classed, and raced. However, the intimate proximities of the
mediated domesticated space via Zoom illuminate an aesthetics of reflexivity about our own
living spaces and dwelling practices. In this roundtable, we wonder what the remediation of
book clubs as digital salons reveals about the anti-aesthetic potentialities of virtual communal
engagement.

This workshop focuses on tips and strategies to pitching a book-length manuscript around pop music artists/topics. We'll cover approaches to making a book bitch appealing, what areas should be addressed/included within the bitch, and, time-permitting, workshopping book ideas among attendees. This workshop will be lead by Oliver Wang, the former acquisitions editor for both the American Music and Music Matters trades series (Univ. of Texas Press).

From lowrider oldies to rancholo rancheras the soundscapes and styles of Los
Angeles and the Southwest United States have changed with the times and
trends. This gathering of Mexican Regional Music participant scholars will share
research and reflections on paisa and MeXican migrant sensibilities and
aesthetics informed by urban and rural realities in the United States and Mexico.
With Mexican regional music and its over a dozen subgenres breaking records and at
the top of the charts, it is a crucial time and topic to discuss the influence of music on
the clothing, styles, and lifestyle of this bicultural and binational community.
Mexican American and Chicanx subversive youth cultures are instrumental in
shaping cultural trends and politics. Their sound and style detail themes of
immigration, economics, and violence, and tell stories of Mexican heritage, life,
and love. As we witness the globalization of these new and remixed rolas (tracks),
important discussions remain around how gender, class, race, sexuality, and other
positionalities influence representation across geographies and genres– often
blurring borders and crossing lines to impact the consumption and production of
this musical, aesthetic, fashion and overall cultural movement.

This experimental roundtable consisting of Bryan Cantero, Felicia Montes and
Lucero Saldaña will focus on the paisa (Mexican migrant) aesthetics in Mexican
regional music genres such as banda, corridos, norteñas, sierreno, corrido
tumbados, belicos and more. These long-time Paisa participant scholars, artists,
dancers, and fans of this musical culture will gather in a communal conversation
and visual and sonic listening session to show the sounds, steps, and styles
connected to the music. We will discuss the gender and style dynamics that have
birthed brands, trends, and viral sensations across, ranches, rodeos, radio
stations, streets, and social media. A special focus will be on current key artists,
bands, influencers, and designers who are making waves. Caile al baile! (join the
dance)

Cowboy hats, boots, and jeans are just a few clichéd garments associated with country music. It’s
a genre whose many styles act as a key part of its identity and performance. Fashion is also a site
where country’s borders are both extended and suppressed. This panel will consider the
influences behind country music’s style and how these fashions have offered inclusive and
exclusive sites of contestation. We consider topics such as the rise of the hunter/fisherman
masculine ideal as performed by artists like Riley Green and Luke Combs, the strict style
boundaries of race and gender played out on the Grand Ole Opry stage, the Mexican origins of
“American” western wear, and what evolving headwear says about country music’s changing
class politics. We consider how country music’s many fashions act not simply as superficial
attire but as key sites where the genre’s shifting race, gender, class, and power politics are
continuously constructed and performed.

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS 

“Huntin’, Fishin’, and Lovin’ Every Day”: Country Music’s Evolving Masculine Ideal
Will Groff

In 2015, Luke Bryan released “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day,” a twangy ode to his
favorite outdoor leisure activities. In the first verse, Bryan waxes poetic about the pleasures of
being in the woods, singing about being “high on a hill” and “never worry[ing] about the price of
gas.” The music video plays out like a Bass Pro Shops ad, with shots of Bryan sporting various
outdoorsy outfits while partaking in the titular activities.
The song and its video are emblematic of country music’s increasing preoccupation with outdoor
recreation and the central role of the outdoorsman image in reshaping the genre’s ever-evolving
masculine ideal. While the flamboyant Nudie Suits and pearl snap shirts of yore haven’t
disappeared, today’s male country stars often adopt a more casual, “everyman” aesthetic. This
shift mirrors broader trends in the fashion world, where workwear and outdoor apparel have
become prominent in streetwear culture and high-fashion collections.
Accordingly, country’s embrace of outdoor recreation has presented its stars with opportunities
for brand collaborations and marketing opportunities. For example, look no further than Luke
Combs’s Columbia PFG (Performance Fishing Gear) shirts, on sale at his website for a cool $75,
or “duckman” Riley Green’s Real Tree Camo collab.
This paper examines how male country stars are using outdoor apparel to perform masculinity
and curate an “authentic” country image. It places the outdoorsman in a lineage of masculine
country personas, from Jimmie Rodgers’s “Singing Brakeman” to the singing cowboy image that
dominated the genre’s imagination starting in the 1930s. This outdoorsman costume allows
today’s country singers to remain relatable to their audiences by projecting a rugged and vaguely
working-class masculine ideal, even as they push a consumerist fantasy of aspirational living and
turn a profit in the process.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Mexican Origins of Country Music’s “American” Style
Nadine Hubbs

What do corrido, norteño, Tejano, Duranguense, banda, and country music have in common?
They share the hats, boots, western shirts, belts, and buckles that serve as rugged workwear for
the cowboy and have long influenced daily dress for the rest of us. It’s a style recognized the
world over as iconically American, by association with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show,
twentieth-century Hollywood westerns and singing cowboys, and country music stars up to
today. But in fact, it’s a style that started out definitively Mexican and remains so, as ropa
vaquera (cowboy kit) and, in regional music genres, the look of Mexican sound.

Another mainstay of country music style is the Nudie suit. Named for the Ukrainian immigrant
tailor Nudie Cohn, the spangly, embroidered ensemble could well be called the Cuevas suit,
given the importance of Manuel Cuevas’s contributions to the genre. Before moving to the
United States and working as Cohn’s assistant, Cuevas learned his trade as a tailor and clothing
designer in Mexico. There, the postwar Nudie suit appears as kin to the traje de charro/a
(equestrian suit). With roots in the sixteenth century, the elegant, embroidered regalia of the
genteel horseman and horsewoman became a nineteenth-century symbol of Mexican
independence and later, the costume of mariachi and ranchera musicians.

In research for my book project Border Country: Mexico, America, and Country Music, Mexican
American country fans spoke appreciatively on the Mexican aspects of country musical style.
But in mainstream U.S. perspective, country’s Mexican dimensions go unrecognized.
Spotlighting the visual and sartorial, I will argue that some of the attributes of country music
regarded as most iconically American are actually Mexican. And I’ll consider the implications of
such misrecognition for country music’s claims to quintessential Americanness and for social,
and cultural, justice.

“My Own Kind of Hat”: Headwear and Country Music’s Evolving Class Politics
Amanda Marie Martinez

From cowboy hats to ball caps, headwear has always been central to country music’s fashion.
Hats have also symbolized the genre’s evolving class politics, especially when it’s come to
performances of masculinity. When country music was first invented as a marketing category in
the 1920s, it was called “hillbilly” music and was associated with stereotyped, rural southern
attire akin to overalls and a straw hat. In following decades, as the singing cowboy took over
popular culture amid the Great Depression and World War II, country singers gravitated to the
cowboy hat. Not only was this in tune with trends of that era, it also helped the genre battle
classist discriminations that it experienced due to its associations with a white, rural, and
southern demographic. The cowboy was much more respectable than the hillbilly. By the 1960s,
cowboy hats fell out of fashion, especially as bedazzled Nudie suits emerged as the ultimate
marker of country music’s authenticity during that period. By the late 1970s, the cowboy hat
returned—this time in a feathered, straw version as the Urban Cowboy craze dominated popular
culture. In rece

Heavy metal and punk music fans share something in common: they wear their fandom on their
proverbial sleeves. Through their band t-shirts, leather jackets, tattoos and hairstyles,
metalheads and punks are often recognizable by choice. While rules and regulations are often
unspoken, there is a common understanding among these music fans that they will often be
judged, not just for their chosen appearance, but in how they make their fandom public.
This roundtable discussion will consider what happens when metal fandom is shared within
cultural communities that are not perceived as being “metal.” With the growing ethnic, gender
and sexual diversity within these scenes, metal and punk fans are no longer just intimidating
straight white men with an appearance that would make you cross to the other side of the street.
How do Muslim women metalheads dress? Do black punk fans wear mohawks? This panel will
look at growing metal and punk scenes from across the globe to explore how their visual
aesthetics reflect the growing diversity within these scenes and how these fans negotiate space,
identity, and present visual narratives.

This roundtable proposes an exploration of the iconic queer Los Angeles night, Mustache
Mondays, as a vibrant intersection of popular music, fashion, and creative expression. C0-
founded in 2007 by Ignacio “Nacho” Nava, Mustache Mondays fostered a community where
music, visual culture, and style converged, creating a space for Black and Brown queer
people. Nava’s vision was not just about curating a party; it was about using music and style
to challenge norms and uplift marginalized voices.

Mustache Mondays flourished at a time when LGBTQ+ nightlife was often confined to
spaces that catered predominantly to cisgender, white gay men. What set this night apart was
its embrace of queer and trans people of color, and its celebration of avant-garde aesthetics.
The night became a platform for underground artists, DJs, drag performers, stylists, and
musicians who didn’t fit into more mainstream queer scenes.

At the heart of Mustache Mondays was a fusion of music genres that reflected its eclectic
audience. It drew inspiration from house, techno, electroclash, hip-hop and global diasporic
sounds, all underscored by the DIY ethos that characterized much of LA’s underground
scene. This musical curation not only fostered a sense of community but also offered an
alternative sonic landscape to more homogenized club music.

Mustache Mondays harnessed style not only to reflect the aesthetics of underground queer
culture but also as a site of transformation. Nava embraced avant-garde fashion, encouraging
attendees to express themselves through bold looks that resisted the whitewashed depictions
of LGBTQ culture common in West Hollywood. Mustache became a launchpad for artists
like Kelela and Total Freedom (Bobby Beethoven), where music, performance, and style
coalesced to shape a new vision for queer cultural expression in Los Angeles. Over the years
many musicians came out of Mustache, DJs like Nguzunguzu, producers like Kelman Duran,
and also artists in various realms, like fashion designers Pia Davis (No Sesso), contemporary
artist rafa esparza, and choreographer Ryan Heffington.

In the wake of Nava’s passing, Mustache Mondays continues to resonate as a space where
popular music, fashion, and queer experiences collided, and this roundtable seeks to unpack
its lasting impact on the cultural landscape of Los Angeles and beyond.
Participants will include DJ Josh Peace, Kelman Duran, and Pia Davis, who will share their
perspectives on Mustache Mondays as a site of creative freedom, resistance, and community.
By engaging with these narratives, the roundtable aims to contribute to larger discussions on
queer nightlife, urban space, and the politics of style.

Kevin Holt, “‘I Come In The Club Shaking My Dreads’: Locs and the Formation
 of a New Southern Black Politic”

Locs have a complex and storied history in black style. Often associated with gestures
in reconnecting to mythic black authenticities and Afro-centric political/religious
movements (e.g. Rastafarianism and Ifa), they have consistently announced various
stances along the spectrum of pro-blackness since the mid-20 th century. Today locs are
extremely common among hip-hop artists from Atlanta. I argue that crunk artists
incorporated locs into their fashions, not as a continuation of the earlier movements, but
as a novel gesture in pro-black disrespectability politics, to borrow from Brittany
Cooper’s deconstruction of ratchetness. The gesture of “shaking your dreads” exists as
a multivalent expression of authentic and un-contained blackness that connotes an
affinity with black radicalism and an eschewing of the “respectable” self-presentation
and/or overt political posturing often expected of the predecessors who wore them. My
proposed paper offers an exploration of this dynamic, following artists like Lil Jon, the
Migos, and Crime Mob.

Alfred Soto, “Make It Straight: Hair Involutions and Revolutions in Male UK Glam Rock”

No male singer sported better hair in rock than Bryan Ferry, Thick, dark, lustrous, it had a sheen
like a new Ferrari, which made Ferry the ideal lead singer and songwriter for Roxy Music. Fans
could trace the evolution of Roxy through his follicle revolutions: from the immobile pompadour
of the early years to the moist loosely combed locks of the Avalon-era

I will demonstrate how the coifs of male glam rock icons and their musical choices
complemented each other. David Bowie’s post-mod wet blanket during the Hunky Dory era
matched his quiet subversions of singer-songwriter rock, followed by the magnificent henna-hair
cockatoo of Ziggy Stardust. The insouciant curls and the in-your-face flash of Marc Bolan and
the New York Dolls. As the acts entered the 1980s, I will show how the age offered divergent
paths: a more conservative look for Ferry and in the case of Bowie a regrettable attempt to out-
mullet contemporaries (Bolan, alas, didn’t live to realize his metal guru dreams).

Finally, I will explain the nexus between hair and sexuality. While Bowie’s protean sartorial
shifts suggested polymorphous curiosity, Ferry’s adherence to Old World glamour effaced his
sexual presentation such that he metamorphosed into a Holy Spirit of Tremulous Melancholy by
the time shoulder pads became acceptable fashion for ‘80s men. Things bottomed out at the end
of the decade when Jesus & Mary Chain sang “I don’t care ‘bout the state of my hair” like snotty
kids picking on Grandpa.

Rhonda Nicole Tankerson, “‘I Just Don't Believe It's Fair’: How Black Women Artists 
Use Hair as Symbols of Resistance and Revolution”

“People ask me everywhere, is that really all of your hair? I just tell ‘em if it ain’t, that it sho’ don’t
mean that now I can’t. I just don’t believe it’s fair to judge [a girl] by the length of [her] hair.”
For Black folks across the Diaspora but particularly in America, hair is a subject that has, for
generations, evoked conflicting sentiments of pride, shame, rebellion, and assimilation. In this
funk-laden cut from Graham Central Station’s eponymous 1974 album, bassist and band leader
Larry Graham is likely referencing the Afro–his and others’, one of the most popular and distinct
styles of the 1970s. As Prince would remind us in the mid-2010s, “An afro is not a hairstyle.”
When the Purple One, the Queen of Funk Chaka Khan, and Graham collaborated on an
updated version of the song for Khan’s 1998 NPG Records release Come to My House, “Hair”
took on an even more nuanced meaning being performed by a Black woman musician
renowned for her beautiful, bountiful mane.

Black women’s hair is an eternal site of tension, empowerment, political thought and action.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Black women artists’ follicular expression: from The
Supremes’ perfectly styled wigs to Patti Labelle’s sculpted crown, to Tina Turner’s golden rock
goddess tresses to Chloe and Halle’s majestic locs. For decades, Black women practitioners of
gospel, blues, pop, R&B, funk, and hip-hop have set the trends, embraced and rejected
conventional beauty expectations, and advanced critical conversations through their hair. Black
women musicians’ hair functions as fashion, art, and documentation of the socio-political climate
of the times, and perhaps foreshadows what is to come in entertainment and commerce. In this
presentation, I will explore how Black women music artists’ hair serves as a source of resistance
and revolution.

Alex Diaz-Hui, “Makeup, Hair Salons, and Style in Reggaetón and Latin Trap”

This listening session focuses women and queer emcees in reggaetón and Latin trap
who develop their musical identities through makeup, hair, and fashion. We will begin
with Ivy Queen, often known as La Reina de Reggaetón (The Queen of Reggaetón),
whose performances and interviews often center on her extravagant nails and outfits.
Critics have acknowledged how the political and social critique of Ivy Queen’s music
comes from the interplay between her lyricism and a look centered on her nails and
makeup. Scholars also consider how these looks rely on a contradictory relationship
with anti-blackness in Puerto Rico. Our discussion of hair and makeup in reggaetón and
Latin trap will consider how the genre’s origins come from different sites of musical
circulation that have conflicting traditions and perspectives. Regardless of these
contradictions, Ivy Queen is regarded as one of the early women emcees to receive
airplay on the island and its diaspora. Her work juxtaposes her nails, hairstyles, and
outfits with songs that speak out against police violence and men who pressure women
at nightclubs. Her song “Quiero Bailar” (“I Want to Dance”) has since been used as an
anthem for feminist movements throughout Puerto Rico because of its call for women to
dance without feeling pressured to go home with the men they dance with. This listening
session begins with Ivy Queen’s early performances, both in The Noise and selections
from her debut and sophomore albums, En Mi Imperio and The Original Rude Girl. We
will focus on music videos to “Quiero Bailar” and “In the Zone” to grasp the range of
looks that defined her rise as one of the key icons of old-school reggaetón. We will see
how “Quiero Bailar” inspires makeup trends on TikTok that have channeled recent
attention to her work throughout North America.

The second half of the listening session will focus on Ivy Queen’s contemporary
performances, collaborations, and influence on women in developing scenes in Latin
trap between Puerto Rico, Chile, and Argentina. “Mami” by Paloma Mami interpolates
lyrics from “Quiero Bailar” to narrativize rejecting a man’s advances. Latin trap
superstars Young Miko and Villano Antillano have both discussed Ivy Queen’s role in
their musical upbringing and often allude to makeup trends in the early 2000s. Ivy
Queen also has collaborated with women in contemporary Latin trap, including Maria
Becerra. We will discuss how these artists use the form of the music video to visualize
Latinidad through makeup, fixing one's hair, and the act of getting ready for a night out.
We will compare these looks and ask how they are inspired by, and sometimes
appropriate, aesthetics from hip-hop and American popular music. Time will also be
given for the group to share songs that resonate with these concerns of style, gender,
and rebellion in modern music, including Princess Nokia, and Kali Uchis, among others.
Participants are welcome to bring makeup.

Rose Bishop, “Snapshots of the Counterculture: Rolling Stone, Rags, 
and the ‘Bay Area School’ of Fashion Photography, 1967–1983”

This proposed paper considers the role of Rolling Stone magazine (est. 1967), and its
short-lived companion devoted to fashion, Rags (1970-1971), in the development and
popularization of street style photography. Unlike the meticulously staged scenarios
found in the pages of conventional fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s
Bazaar, early issues of Rolling Stone and Rags were illustrated with candid snapshots
of self-styled models, who used clothing to express their identification with West Coast
counterculture and its associated music fandoms. These environmental portraits,
produced at nightclubs, music festivals, and record shops, reveal an alternate tradition
of street photography currently absent from our understanding of 1960s and 1970s
documentary practices. I will spotlight the work of Baron Wolman, Rolling Stone’s first
chief photographer (1967-1970) and the founding editor-in-chief of Rags, as well as
Wolman’s successor at Rolling Stone, Annie Leibovitz (1970-1983), to outline the use of
snapshot photography in these two interconnected publications. Such pictures, I argue,
reflect the shifting politics of beauty, authenticity, and personal expression in 1970s
America, and offer new insight into music media’s relationship with fashion reportage.

Katherine Reed, “‘Music is Serious, Fashion is Silly’:
Rock, Style, and Rolling Stone in the 1980s”

For the magazine’s 20 th anniversary in 1987, Rolling Stone planned a special issue with
David Bowie gracing the cover. The theme? “Style.” The extra-long issue included
photos and an interview with Bowie, along with a feature tracking the fashion history of
musical subcultures. This issue sheds light on RS’s 1980s turn toward fashion and the
way the magazine conceptualized its relationship to style in a changing media landscape.
Rolling Stone came to that focus well after rock and its denizens did, and for different
reasons– choosing to center Bowie’s fashion in 1987 is markedly different from doing so
in 1972.

This paper focuses on that anniversary issue to examine the 1980s connection between
music, fashion, and the press, explored by Hebdige and Davis in earlier contexts. To do
so, I begin a decade before that RS issue, examining glam and Bowie’s affinity for
subversive style and the ways periodicals like Creem began capitalizing on it through
their reader contests and “Eleganza” column. Drawing from new interviews, RS’s
fashion features, and internal magazine communications, I then focus on fashion editor
Laurie Schechter’s 1985-1987 tenure at RS as a turning point in that magazine’s fashion
coverage. I show how Schechter created RS’s fashion section and pushed for style
coverage that went beyond a mainstream advertising focus, and why Bowie as
figurehead (with all his fashion history) was important in that push. The 1985-7
coverage shows how musicians, editors, and fashion professionals understood music’s
importance in forging multimedia identities. While other Rolling Stone editors saw
fashion as a commercial opportunity, Schechter’s choices show the deep connection
between star image and fashion. Assessing the internal discussion around her music-
centered choices, I argue that this moment in fashion coverage reveals the changing
symbiotic relationship among fashion, music, gender dynamics and the press in the
1980s.

Kimberly Mack, “Nasty Gal: A Black Critical Response to
Betty Davis’ 1970s Live Performances”

Between 1973 and 1975, funk-rock singer, songwriter, and producer, Betty Davis,
released three albums, Betty Davis, They Say I’m Different, and Nasty Gal. While her
output failed to garner commercial success—radio, in particular, rarely played her
songs—her live shows became infamous. Davis’ onstage fashion certainly played a
role—her style was sexy and fabulous whether she was wearing hot pants and thigh
high platform boots or a trench coat with lingerie underneath (Mahon 237 ). But it was
what she did with her body onstage that caused moral panics among the Black middle
class, the White middle class print media, and unprepared (male) audience members.
Her pelvic thrusts and booty shaking was too much for onlookers unaccustomed to such
a joyous and uninhibited expression of Black female sexuality. The uproar was loud
enough for the NAACP to join protests to stop a Black radio station in Detroit from
playing her song, “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up.” (Mahon 231).

Davis played a series of live shows at the popular New York City club, the Bottom Line,
in June 1974 in support of They Say I’m Different and one show at the same venue at
the end of 1975 after the release of Nasty Gal. There’s virtually no extant live footage of
Davis from the 1970s, so what we know about those performances is largely mediated
through the writings of music critics who are overwhelmingly White and male. This
presentation will focus on Vernon Gibbs, a Black male rock critic who wrote positively
about Davis’ live performances in Phonograph Record, Crawdaddy!, and Penthouse in
1974 and 1976, calling out the underlying sexual repression, and latent sexism, in the
reception to her music. Gibbs’ intervention underscores the vital role that Black rock
critics played in articulating a politics of support and allyship for Black rockers who faced
obstacles in the music industry because of their race and, in this case, gender.

Moderator: Sarah Kessler, University of Southern California

Destiny Meadows, “Glittery Gowns, Holiday Cheer, and Caroling Capitalists: [Re]Configuring Intimacy through Modern-Day Christmas Specials”

In 2019, streaming giant Amazon Prime Video released The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show, a Christmas variety special starring Kacey Musgraves and featuring a revolving door of musical guests including Troye Sivan, Leon Bridges, and the Rockettes. As Musgraves moved through holiday standards like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” her wardrobe, too, continuously changed. Custom Gucci brooches, Giambattista Valli gowns, and Manolo Blahnik pumps provided a stark contrast to the intimacy suggested by her covers of World War II-era classics.
Musgraves’ Christmas Show, though perhaps novel in its brazen nods to designer fashions, comes from a lasting lineage of holiday variety specials—starring prominent figures—that were produced in the latter half of the twentieth century. From Judy Garland (1963) to Dean Martin (1967), and the Captain and Tennille (1976), celebrities have capitalized off the intimate affordances of the televised Christmas variety special. However, a larger communication circuit including new streaming partnerships with musical artists have reconfigured—through both fashion and capital—the imagined domestic space produced by these specialized variety shows. New forms of mediation have redefined such concepts as closeness and attainability while simultaneously reifying celebrity through visual signifiers, specifically through luxury clothing.
This paper examines two musical Christmas variety shows created by pop artists Kacey Musgraves (2019) and Sabrina Carpenter (2024). Drawing on the work of sound and media scholars Christina Baade (2022), Karen McNally (2012), and Eric Drott (2024), I argue that the connection between fashion and present-day media technologies has contributed to shifts in audience perceptions of celebrity intimacy in Christmas programming. I suggest that newer variety shows reify investments in both the celebrity and the streaming services, whose strategic, capital-driven partnerships are demonstrable through changing fashion and visual spectacle.

Clay Conley, “Black T-Shirts and Cargo Pants: The Disguised Labor of Sound Engineers”

Just like theatrical tech crews, sound engineers have a uniform: all black, black work pants, black band t-shirts, and black comfortable sneakers or boots (Curtin and Sanson 2017, Mayer, Banks and Caldwell 2009). Because live music productions center around the spectacle of an artist performing, black clothing allows the laboring body of the sound engineer to blend in with the black stage and curtains of most venues (Kielich 2024). The illusion of invisible laboring bodies can best be described as a “swan effect” (Behr et al. 2016) where essential work is below the surface, behind the musicians, their instruments, and the stage. Beyond wearing black, sound engineer’s technological extensions are visually disguised through cable management, discrete mixing stations, pre-show sound checks, etc.
In amplified venues, sound engineers have audible traces through the balance of the mix, prevalence of feedback, monitor levels, and/or audio effects. During ethnographic research working as and alongside sound engineers at mid-sized independent venues both in Ann Arbor, MI and New York City, I observed that sound engineers work to minimize these audible traces. In addition to invisibility, sound engineers are also inaudible. Jacob Faraday (2021) recognizes this concealment as a culture of control wherein the eponymous sound guy is distinctly masculine.
In this cultural space, essential workers prefer to cease to exist. Sound engineers find pride and success in convincing ticket holders that the artists are the primary actors in the realization of liveness. As visually and audibly disguised laborers serving the success of the performer, a job well done for an engineer hinges on the eclipsing of the barrier between artist and audience. In the pursuit of liveness, mediation, sound engineers and their technology, yearns to be hidden, drawing the audience closer to the living presence (Emmerson 2007) of the artist. 

Rebecca Rinsema, “Putting the Brakes on Accelerated Consumer Culture: Pedagogy, Fashion, and Comedy on ‘The Voice’”

The 13-year-old singing competition show ‘The Voice’ can be read as an example of our contemporary accelerated consumer culture. Biannually producers cast singers from all over the United States to compete in becoming the next pop phenom. The show trades on packaging and cycling through the traumatic life journeys of the cast members and attached emotional vocal performances. With a new potential phenom spotlighted every five minutes, roughly, (during ‘The Blinds’), the show can be viewed as a microcosm of the consumer culture it exists within. In this presentation, I complicate the above reading of the show by emphasizing the characteristics of ‘The Voice’ that I argue decelerate consumer culture, and of popular music in particular. Typically, an accelerated consumer culture focuses consumers’ attention on the ‘now’ and ‘next,’ and, while this is true for the attention that audiences pay to the contestants, the attention paid to the coaches requires further framing. The coaches are popular music ‘icons;’ that are seasoned in the music industry; by industry standards, they are old. The coaches, thus, call to mind ‘the past,’ encouraging viewers to locate the contestants’ versions of the songs within a meaningful (nostalgic) historical lineage. As one would expect, the coaches are teachers of the contestants, which encourages viewers to reassess notions of ‘born-with-it’ vocal talent that more easily aligns with accelerated pop music culture. The coaches bring something ‘new’ to the table, in that they position themselves for the reality television medium as fashion influencers (Gwen Stefani, Ariana Grande, Snoop Dogg) and comedians (Michael Buble, Blake Shelton). I read this reinvention of the ‘old standards,’ along with the coaches’ pedagogical and contextualizing functions, as supporting a kind of stasis and continuity of pop culture that works against the inertial motion toward and allure of the ‘always new.’

Moderator: Alan Parkes, University of Delaware

Aidan Levy, “Way Out West: Stetsons, Mohawks, and Frontiers of Sound and Style”
The cowboy hat and the mohawk are deeply entrenched symbols in the iconography of American popular music, synonymous with punk nonconformity and country swagger. However, there is a counternarrative of artists of color who have signified on the fashion and style of cowboys and Native Americans to critique America’s founding myths, exposing the country’s settler colonial past while simultaneously honoring indigenous culture and claiming a shared cultural heritage—an emancipatory vision through sound and style. This presentation begins with Sonny Rollins and traces this history of sartorial and coiffed resistance to the present. In the 1957 album Way Out West, Rollins paid tribute to one of his idols, Herb Jeffries, the “Bronze Buckaroo.” Rollins and photographer William Claxton shot the iconic cover photo in the Mojave Desert, with the rogue saxophonist wearing a Stetson and holster, brandishing his tenor like a six-shooter with a rented steer’s skull in the background. The album crossed a new sonic frontier while subverting racial stereotypes as a forerunner to Blazing Saddles. In 1963, Rollins started wearing a mohawk haircut, not as a metonym for nonconformity, but to pay homage to indigenous music and culture. In performances, he would frequently wear a cowboy hat only to remove it mid-performance and ironically reveal a mohawk underneath, claiming not only the tradition of the western as his own cultural inheritance, but also the buried history of dispossession that represents the dark side of the American dream. To what extent has this tradition been an act of cultural appropriation? To what extent has it been used for cultural critique? I will consider this lineage of resistance through the iconography of the cowboy hat and the mohawk, including Joe Strummer, Lil Nas X, Taboo from Black Eyed Peas, Shaboozey, and Cowboy Carter. 
Hannah Moltz, “Y2K Cowgirl or US Imperial-Core? Examining the Enduring Legacy of the Cowboy and Reconfiguring the Contours and Limitations of the Cowgirl Aesthetic as Subversive Resistance”
What does the rising popularity of Y2K styles, particularly the Y2K cowgirl, reflect within the contemporary context of challenges to US imperialism, counter-offenses to these challenges from coalitions of formerly colonized nations, some of the largest protests in US history, and widespread disenchantment with the United States’ imperial agenda at home? Pop feminism continues to supply a steady stream of subversive starlets like Chappell Roan, Kacey Musgraves, and Sabrina Carpenter - whose looks and sounds can be linked to the many cowgirls before them in Dolly Parton, The Chicks, Madonna, and many more. The cowgirl motif enjoys a far reach, found in Mitski’s Be the Cowboy, Rina Sawayama’s “This Hell,” and arguably the highest impact homage to the cowgirl in Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. This paper will examine the roots of the cowgirl aesthetic, the signals deployed by the aesthetic, and compare the critical gaze applied to different bodies who utilize it to send messages to their audiences about who they are. It will ask if this look constitutes an aesthetic of resistance and liberation, and what the limits and accomplishments of that aesthetic might be, or another nostalgic trend to drive over-consumption and diminish attention given to aesthetics that signal counter-cultures and drive organization and direct action. It seems worth wondering whether or not this is an aesthetic of resistance or a continuation of a decades long infatuation with subverting the cowboy to create the cowgirl - one with equal opportunity to dominate and exploit rather than liberate from a culture of imperial violence. To consider these questions I will engage the work of Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, Nell Irvin Painter’s History of White People, Tansy E Hoskins Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, as well as journal publications from Nicole Doer, Lisa Jacobson, Lydia Goehr, and Meredith Levande.  
Lisa Sorrell, “From the Saddle to the Stage: Country Music and the Evolution of Cowboy Boots”

Cowboy boots have long been the standard footwear of country music, both for the performers and their fans. Exploring the history of the cowboy boot, examining how they evolved from plain black boots the cowboys of trail drives wore, to the brightly colored, high-heeled, pointed-toe footwear we recognize today, this project proposes how this evolution happened alongside, and for the benefit of, entertainment. Given that there is little academic research on cowboy boots, and that the craft of cowboy boot making is traditionally passed along orally from master to student, primary sources are limited to historical photos, vintage boot catalogs, and the memories of aging boot makers. With over thirty years of experience as a cowboy boot maker, I have access to the craft and its embedded knowledge, giving me unique access into its history and traditions. This project will highlight how cowboy boots, the most universal staple of country music fashion, contributed visually and aesthetically to country music from its beginnings to today.
Jacob Kopcienski, “‘White Trash Revelry’: Rural Queer Style, Narrative, and Strategy in Adeem the Artist’s Country Music and Media” 
In their 2023 Opry Debut, the non-binary, queer, Knoxville-based musician Adeem the Artist performed their single “Middle of a Heart” wearing bright red lipstick, wide-brim hat, and a floral jean jacket. Their flamboyant working-class apparel and twangy country vocal affectations underscored the song’s lyrics, which trace tensions between pride, restrictive expectations, and violence in small-town American life. Critics lauded Adeem’s performances and Americana Emerging Artist of the Year nomination as a progressive shift in rural politics and country music industries. Yet, performers like Jason Aldean and conservative legislators in Tennessee claimed rural landscapes, iconography, and styles for conservative values through performances and queer/transphobic legislation. This paper examines the sonic, narrative, and aesthetic strategies Adeem the Artist uses to navigate contested symbols and experiences in rural life and Country Music. 
Using quare (E. Patrick Johnson, 2001) as an intersectional framework, I argue that Adeem “sincerely” uses country aesthetics (Goldin-Perschbacher, 2022), narratives (Thomas-Reid, 2020) and sound (Royster 2012; Stoever 2016; Murchison 2018) to represent queer negotiations with rural power structures. Cast Iron Pansexual (2021) queers Appalachian aesthetics and gender conventions to construct non-linear narratives through shame, identity, and place (Halberstam, 2005; Gray, 2009). White Trash Revelry (2022) reworks sonic and narrative tropes structuring white, working-class masculinity in 1990s Country Music to express disappointment in rural economies and national politics, while imagining intersectional coalitions (Marcus, 2024).
Adapting “acoustic citizenship” (Sonevytsky, 2019), I argue that Adeem uses these stylistic moves in ways that model aesthetic strategies for navigating country music industry and re-envisioning rural municipal politics. Adeem’s grass-roots social media “Redneck Fundraisers” (2022-2024) to produce country albums by circumventing queerphobic industry barriers. Their music videos (e.g. “Run This Town”) use rural queer styles to reflect rural activists' ambivalent attachment to municipal politics, while constructing coalitions that address federal and state-level political failures. 

Lesbian pop music, despite rare instances of becoming fashionable and achieving chart viability,
has been construed as otherwise niche and embalmed in past eras like the 1970s and 1990s. As
we’ve entered deeper into this millennium, the lesbian/queer woman presence in pop been
revivified through the expansive sexual and aesthetic imaginary of “sapphism,” a fluid and
purportedly trans-inclusive term that signals the explicitly gay, as well as the more implicitly
“queer coded.” Women pop artists, whether they’ve made a point of being out or not, have
inspired an au courant interest in sapphic pop culture comprised of both performers (like
Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, MUNA, Janelle Monae, Girl in Red, Adrianne Lenker, and others),
and a robust fan culture who draw upon the historical archives and intimate reading practices
of lesbian cultures and queer theory—including the resurgence of actual Sapphic poetry and
aesthetics.

This roundtable explores the explosion of sapphic pop over the last decade, while revisiting
some of the historical and aesthetic touchstones of sapphism. Among the topics we plan to
cover include certain controversies about“Gaylorism,” queer baiting, and queer coding more
broadly. We will also parse between flourishing, open and out expressions of sapphic sexuality,
and the loud insinuations or expressions of “allyship” that set themselves ever-so-slightly apart.

This innovative roundtable unites Oaxacan music educators and scholars to explore the dynamic soundscape of Oaxacalifornia, focusing on Midcity and South-Central Los Angeles—home to the most significant Indigenous Oaxacan community outside of Mexico. Through critical dialogue and live musical demonstrations, our panel examines how gender, leadership, and cultural preservation intersect within traditionally male-dominated musical spaces, particularly in Oaxacan philharmonics and community-based bands. Drawing from their roles as practitioners, cultural bearers, and scholars, the presenters will demonstrate how women's increasing participation has transformed leadership paradigms while maintaining deep connections to cultural heritage. Additionally, how Oaxacan youth seek musical opportunities in higher education and mainstream venues. 
Addressing the conference themes of "Music, gender, and performance" and "Music, rebellion, agitation, protest," our roundtable explores how musical practices in Oaxacalifornia push against traditional boundaries and hierarchies. We examine how these musical borderlands serve as sites of both cultural preservation and innovation, challenging conventional notions of gender roles, leadership, and artistic expression. Integrating live performances by panelists will provide attendees with direct engagement on the sonic dimensions of these transformations, illustrating how musicians navigate the edges and borders of place, sound, genre, and style.
Our discussion illuminates how transborder networks facilitate the exchange of musical knowledge while creating new possibilities for cultural expression and community building. Through this combination of scholarly analysis and musical demonstration, we offer unique insights into how Oaxacan musical traditions adapt and evolve across borders while maintaining their cultural essence.